When starting anything new, there are always key things you need to learn to be successful, and most importantly, there is always someone or something out there to help you learn them.
Whether it's your dad teaching you to ride a bike, your grandmother walking you through a family recipe, or Leon Noel teaching you key skills and concepts on how to be a Software Engineer through YouTube. There are an infinite amount of resources to help you be successful, and I've decided to take advantage of them to help improve my writing skills and better understand technical and UX writing as I work towards transitioning into a writing career. Let's start with technical writing!
Wait, so what is Technical Writing?
Technical writing is writing designed to explain complex, technical, and specialized information in a more easy-to-digest way to help users understand the skill or product.
So what exactly does the technical writer do?
Technical writers create user manuals, how-to guides, troubleshooting guides, standard operating procedures (SOP), white papers, proposals, case studies, API documentation, and more, depending on who the audience is.
The key to being a technical writer is being able to communicate in a way that presents complex information in an easy-to-understand way for the intended audience so that they can use the information for the intended purpose.
So all in all, a technical writer takes complex information and breaks it down so that the intended users can understand it.
What are some key tips that can lead me toward success in my writing?
Through research, I've compiled a list of key skills that showcase good technical writing that people want to read, and after all, we do want people to read it.
They know how to explain things clearly and simply
They meet the reader at their point of knowledge
They dig deep into research to ensure they fully understand the subject matter
They create an outline for their content
They proofread
As we progress in our writing, may we keep these tips in mind to ensure that we are not only becoming a technical writer, but a good one.